Allison Meier
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Articles by Allison Meier
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s cemetery art restored in the Bronx
Bronze sculptures created by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney for the Untermyer Memorial are among New York City’s most evocative outdoor works of art. Yet nestled in a corner of the Bronx’s Woodlawn Cemetery, they have largely been overlooked. A recent restoration of the memorial supported by the Untermyer family is bringing new attention to its design by Paul Chalfin, best known for his opulent work at Miami’s Villa Vizcaya, as well as to Whitney’s sculptures.
Staten Island's historic Britton Cottage gets $2.1m transformation
The centuries of change witnessed by Staten Island’s Britton Cottage are visible in the strata of materials that make up the over 350-year-old house. At the centre is a fieldstone structure dating to 1670 and the early days of New York City’s colonisation. Flanking it are mid-18th-century wood-frame additions with weathered clapboard. Most significant in its years of transformation is its location.
Houston exhibition explores memory and mythmaking in the American landscape
In Brunswick, Georgia, three worn, boulder-like forms are deteriorating in a tidal salt marsh. Sometimes they are nearly hidden when the waters rise. Marsh Ruins was created from concrete and tabby (lime, sand, ash and shells) by the US artist Beverly Buchanan (1940-2015) in 1981 and subtly draws attention to the complex history of this land.
People power
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‘Race against time’ to rescue Alabama Civil Rights landmark
The Edistone Hotel has stood in downtown Selma, Alabama, since 1855 witnessing the tides of history, from slavery to the Civil War to the Reconstruction era to the Civil Rights Movement. In the late 20th century, it was closed and neglected amid the loss of many of the city’s industries and the decline of its population.
Where Lies the Revolutionary Soldier?
For the ordinary soldier of the American Revolution, memorialized by neither statue nor monument, grave sites offer a rare opportunity for remembrance. Yet more than 250 years after the outbreak of that war, many of those graves remain obscure. They are hidden beneath battlefields where the fallen were hastily covered in the ravaged earth or below barely legible markers.
‘A poem to the prairie’: new life for architecture as sculpture
While cities across the United States were being transformed by sleek glass towers in the mid-20th century, on the Great Plains a more fantastic vision of Modern architecture was being built. Now known as the American School, this rebellious strain of design had no boundaries in style, form or materials.
JAMES "SON FORD" THOMAS
Gravedigger and blues musician James ”Son Ford” Thomas moulded clay skulls and coffins that reflect his thoughts on death and the afterlife The joys of life and the grim shadow of death were never far apart for James “Son Ford” Thomas. One of the many nicknames the Mississippi Delta blues musician picked up was “Cairo” for his evocative take on Cairo Blues, recorded by Melvin “Lil Son” Jackson in 1949.
New York City’s oldest library refreshes its historic home
Since its establishment in 1754, the New York Society Library has sought to put books into the hands of readers. That mission was pioneering in an era that predated the taxpayer-funded public library system. Membership fees have supported the growth of what is now New York City’s oldest library—including after its books were looted under the British occupation of Manhattan during the American Revolutionary War—into the 21st century.
Stonewall monument targeted by Trump administration among the US’s most endangered historic places
As celebrations of the US’s semiquincentennial kick into gear, many of the historical sites that recognise the country’s diverse, complex history are in peril. The annual list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places was released Wednesday by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. This year, the list concentrates on sites that reflect the assertion in the country’s founding document that all people are “created equal”.
8 of the Most Notorious Art Forgeries in History
These forgeries fooled the world’s top art experts and museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is one of the institutions fooled by an expert art forger. | H. William Tetlow/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Whether for monetary gain or thrill alone, history’s art forgers have fabricated lost pieces, made exacting copies of originals, and imagined whole new visions in the style of famed creators.
East side story
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Restored Victorian greenhouse links Green-Wood Cemetery to its living neighbours
When Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery opened in 1838, it was one of the first in what is known as the American rural cemetery movement, emerging at a time when cities were growing and their burial grounds had become overcrowded. These new sprawling landscapes allowed the living to remember the dead amid nature and statuary.
Petite Ceinture in Paris
The Petite Ceinture railway circling through the city of Paris served urban travelers from 1862 to 1934 before being abandoned. Predating the Paris Métro, the “little belt” railroad connected the main train stations and provided needed fortification for the city. Construction was started in 1852 under the Empire of Napoléon III and Baron Haussmann, the influential civic planner.
MARGARET MOUSSEAU
First published: March 2026 Vermont artist Margaret Mousseau lets the stories of her past flow out of her through unearthly, twisted, vine-like strokes of colour Winding lines in vivid coloured pencil connect figures, forms and curious creatures in the drawings of US artist Margaret Mousseau. Each work is layered with pattern and detail that draw a viewer in to notice things entwined in the scene, like the tendril of some otherworldly flora or the multicoloured body of a bird.
LEROY JOHNSON
First published: December 2025 The late Leroy Johnson transformed discarded materials into complex sculptural narratives that tell the stories of Black life in Philadelphia. Leroy Johnson was fascinated by the way the humanity of a city is revealed in the texture of its urban environment, in both its daily cacophony of noise, trash and deterioration, and the vibrant life of its communities.
Protecting North America’s oldest cave art after an historic flood raised new alarms
Some of the oldest examples of cave art in the US are on the walls of Dunbar Cave in Clarksville, Tennessee—50 miles northwest of Nashville. Dating back around 800 years, these include petroglyphs carved into the limestone and pictographs drawn in charcoal that were identified in the early 2000s. Some have geometric, abstract forms—such as concentric circular shapes—while others feature human figures or possibly represent beings related to spiritual practice.
Monumental sculpture honours women’s service in US Coast Guard during Second World War Original
There are few public monuments to women’s history in the US and even fewer celebrating these stories on a monumental scale. A new work in Miami Beach recognises the contributions of the US Coast Guard Women’s Reserve or Spars, formed to staff shore stations while men were sent to sea duty during the Second World War.
In 1928, John Ringling of the Ringling Bros circus acquired around 3,300 pieces of ancient Mediterranean art that had been in the collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met). The auction sales made headlines and put the man known as the “circus king” on the map as a major art collector. Today, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, has the third-largest collection of ancient Cypriot art in North America—behind the Met and the Penn Museum in Philadelphia.
Efforts to preserve and repair historic US Black churches get $8.5m boost
The role of the church in Black communities in the US has been one of spirituality, solidarity and catalysing social change. Preserving these sites is about more than protecting historic architecture; it is ensuring that their stories can be told and that the people using these spaces now, as well as future generations, have sanctuary.
13 Facts About Notre-Dame Cathedral
Paris’s iconic Gothic cathedral was nearly destroyed by a horrific fire in 2019. It’s scheduled to reopen later this year. Constructed between the 12th and 14th centuries, Notre-Dame de Paris has centuries of French history built into its stone.
One of New York City’s oldest houses to open as its neighbourhood’s first museum
A history of New York City with Manhattan at its centre overlooks the diversity of people and places that contributed to its growth into a metropolis. Standing for three centuries in the marshland of southeast Brooklyn, the Hendrick I. Lott House is one of the city’s oldest surviving structures. A Dutch Colonial farmhouse, built in 1720 as the homestead of Johannes Lott, was incorporated into a larger structure by Hendrick I.
Cemetery for enslaved people rediscovered at Andrew Jackson’s Tennessee plantation
The legacy of slavery has always been entwined with the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s 1,000-acre Tennessee plantation. There, about ten miles north-east of downtown Nashville, remnants of the quarters formerly inhabited by people enslaved by the seventh US president have been excavated, and artefacts of their daily lives have been unearthed—from sewing thimbles to toy marbles. Until last year, however, where exactly this community had cared for and interred their dead was unknown.
World Monuments Fund’s list of threatened sites includes the Moon
The World Monuments Fund’s (WMF) 2025 Watch list includes 25 sites, ranging from historic structures in Gaza to the Moon—marking the first time the initiative has highlighted a site in outer space. Released on 15 January, the list of threatened cultural heritage spans 29 countries on five continents, in addition to one celestial object.
Gordon Matta-Clark’s caged rosebush, hidden in plain sight for 52 years, is marked and restored
In a brief yet prolific career that ended with his death at age 35 in 1978, Gordon Matta-Clark responded to the neglect of New York City’s urban environment with radical interventions, most famously colossal cuts in abandoned buildings. Much of his work was meant to be ephemeral, and little of it survives, especially in the places it was created. An exception is a small, rusted steel cage outside St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery in the East Village.
Our pick of the shows to see in the world's great art cities in 2025
London: pop goes the capital with culture of the last century The pop culture outsiders of the tail end of the last century are being thrust into the limelight. As well as Tate Modern’s celebration of Leigh Bowery, the Hayward Gallery will host a retrospective of Linder Sterling (11 February-5 May), usually known just by her first name. Linder, who created the collaged cover of Buzzcocks’ single Orgasm Addict, uses photomontage and sculpture for her feminist polemics.
JESSE AARON
First published: Winter 2024/2025 For Jesse Aaron, the trees of his Florida homeland were his muses, resulting in carved sculptures that possess an uncanny sense of being and individuality As much as the divine calling to become a sculptor that he experienced one morning in 1968, Jesse Aaron was guided by the wood itself.
$3.9m restoration project breaks ground in Brooklyn to preserve remnants of a 19th-century free Black community
A groundbreaking event on 3 October kicked off a $3.9m restoration project for the three historic houses at Brooklyn’s Weeksville Heritage Center. The structures are the last physical remnants of one of the largest free Black communities established before the American Civil War.
Surrealism at 100: A Reading List
The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. On October 15, 1924, French poet André Breton published his Manifeste du surréalisme, arguing for a new form of literary creation that would unlock the subconscious. He defined Surrealism as “pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express…the real process of thought. It is the dictation of thought, free from any control by reason and of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.” Breton’s publication was actually a bit belated.
Project Cultivate
The garden style of cemeteries that emerged in the 19th century reimagined the graveyard as a place that foregrounded nature, yet native flora was often uprooted, particularly in places where it did not fit an idealized vision of the environment based on European landscapes. Now, some cemeteries are working to bring back these lost and forgotten plants.
US National Register of Historic Places adds first art environment of an African American artist
The late artist L.V. Hull’s home-studio in Mississippi has been added to the US’s National Register of Historic Places—a first for an art environment created by an African American, and the first time a Black female visual artist’s home-studio has been recognised as nationally significant (rather than just significant to its home state).
The first home-studio of an African American woman artist added to US National Register of Historic Places
The late artist L.V. Hull’s home-studio in Mississippi has been added to the US’s National Register of Historic Places—a first for both a Black female visual artist and for an African American art-environment creator. After Hull bought her house in 1974 in Kosciusko, she transformed it with whatever she could find—from discarded hubcaps she adorned with polka dots to shoes she arrayed on poles like strange flowers among the real blooms of her garden.
Austin’s Blanton Museum reimagines its grounds as a place for a university campus, city and community Original
The Blanton Museum of Art’s recently completed $35m renovation of its grounds centres on a reimagined outdoor space that acts as both a gateway and a gathering place. Bringing together three major site-specific installations and led by the architecture firm Snøhetta, the redesign makes a statement that there is a museum here at the University of Texas at Austin (UT)—something that was once easy to overlook when its stately but subdued Spanish Revival buildings blended into the campus.
AR You Ready?
The fence that segregated Elmwood and Pinewood cemeteries in Charlotte, North Carolina, was removed in 1969, and many visitors today to what is now Historic Elmwood Pinewood Cemetery do not notice the traces of the decades when it was divided by race.
Our Mortal Waltz: The Dance of Death Across Centuries
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Percy John Delf Smith, Death Intoxicated, 1919 — Source. In the trenches on the Western Front of World War I, British artist Percy Smith experienced firsthand the new violence of modern warfare. While serving as a gunner with the Royal Marine Artillery, he covertly sketched the shattered trees and ravaged earth between the trenches, as well as the bodies of soldiers left where they fell in this no-man’s-land.
An Urban Eyesore Provides a Summer Respite
This summer has the potential to be the hottest ever on record, and while some parts of New York City have been designed with greenspaces and street trees that subdue the heat, others are sweltering concrete valleys between radiating towers of glass. Thanks to what’s known as the urban heat island effect, cities tend to be hotter than rural and suburban areas as concrete holds in the warmth, allowing it to linger and thicken the air after the sun has set.
Little-known mural Keith Haring made for an Iowa school goes on public view for first time Original
Keith Haring may have painted the brightly coloured mural in an Iowa City primary school’s library in a single day, but it was the culmination of years of correspondence with its students. He first visited Ernest Horn Elementary School in 1984, during a residency organised with the University of Iowa after an art teacher at Horn, Colleen Ernst, started a pen-pal exchange.
Fifteen exhibitions to see in New York this spring
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Pacita Abad MoMA PS1, until 2 September Organised by the Walker Art Center and now on view at MoMA PS1, this is the first museum retrospective of the late Filipina artist Pacita Abad (1946-2004). She is most widely known for what she referred to as “trapunto” paintings—massive works that she made by stuffing and stitching her painted canvases, instilling them with three-dimensional, quilt-like textural elements.
By Elena Goukassian Verified, Annabel Keenan, Sophia Kishkovsky, Wallace Ludel, Allison Meier Verified, Benjamin Sutton Verified, Linda Yablonsky Verified
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The Art Newspaper
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15 exhibitions to see in New York this spring
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Pacita Abad MoMA PS1, until 2 September Organised by the Walker Art Center and now on view at MoMA PS1, this is the first museum retrospective of the late Filipina artist Pacita Abad (1946-2004). She is most widely known for what she referred to as “trapunto” paintings—massive works that she made by stuffing and stitching her painted canvases, instilling them with three-dimensional, quilt-like textural elements.
By Elena Goukassian Verified, Annabel Keenan, Sophia Kishkovsky, Wallace Ludel, Allison Meier Verified, Benjamin Sutton Verified, Linda Yablonsky Verified
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The Art Newspaper
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A riot of colors and religious iconography, this home was designed for apocalyptic times
(CNN) — The colossal cascades and currents that flow by Niagara Falls have inspired countless artists with their majesty, but Isaiah Robertson was compelled by a vision that they would be the backdrop to the apocalypse. Calling himself the Prophet Isaiah, Robertson spent years painting elaborate wooden cut-out shapes with symbols, including stars and crosses in a riot of colors, to adorn his home — inside and out.
A glimpse into New York City's Dutch heritage 400 years later
Dutch traders had visited the area of North America that is now New York in the early 17th century, but it was not until 1624 that colonists arrived for permanent settlement. By 1660, the colony of New Amsterdam had reached what would be its peak before the 1664 English takeover.
The Art of Impressionism: A Reading List
The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. One hundred and fifty years after the first exhibition of what would be called Impressionism, it’s easy to forget how revolutionary its artists were as they rebelled against the rigid academic style of painting. The Paris exhibition, presented by the loosely organized Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc.
Salvation for artist’s apocalyptic prophecy house
The colossal cascades and currents that flow by Niagara Falls have inspired countless artists with their natural majesty, but Isaiah Robertson was compelled by a vision that they would be the backdrop to the apocalypse. Calling himself the Prophet Isaiah, he spent years painting wooden cut-out shapes with elaborate symbols, including stars and crosses in a riot of colours, to adorn his home inside and out.
Fine Books & Collections
Feature Feathered Beauty Field guides spark the spirit of exploration for birders and collectors Feature Beneath a Concrete Canopy Inside the new home of the American Museum of Natural History’s library Special Section A preview of some of the auctions coming up this spring Gently Mad Ink in His Veins The Ascensius Press keeps the art of letterpress printing alive Digest A Sand County Almanac at 75 Digest Fresh Takes on the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet Record-Breaker Spider-Man Amazes in an...
How the US’s Black cemeteries are being made visible once more
At the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, the location of a Black cemetery has been confirmed through a non-intrusive archaeological survey. So far, 121 potential graves have been identified, with the survey, which involves ground-penetrating radar, still ongoing. In 2019, Rodney Kite-Powell, a historian at the Tampa Bay History Center, alerted the base that a cemetery used from the 1840s to the 1920s by the local Black community was part of its land.
13 shows to see in and around Los Angeles during Frieze
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Thirty Years: Written with a Splash of Blood Blum Gallery, Los Angeles, until 3 March When the gallerist Tim Blum was still a student at UCLA in 1984, he travelled to Tokyo for the first time and was drawn to the underground music, film and art scenes there. A decade later, after working in Tokyo galleries, he gave the Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara his first American exhibition, a major attention-getter at and for his new gallery, Blum & Poe.
By Torey Akers, Theo Belci, Jori Finkel, Elena Goukassian Verified, Allison Meier Verified, Benjamin Sutton Verified
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The Art Newspaper
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Getty Center explores the bloodlines between old and new art
For the 1974 work Untitled (Body Print), Suite of 5, Ana Mendieta shrouded herself in a sheet, an impression of her body in red overlaid on the draped material. In Blood: Medieval/Modern, the colour photograph is contrasted with medieval depictions of Saint Veronica holding what is known as the Sudarium, a miraculous image of Christ revealed from the blood wiped from his face on his way to the cross.
Harlem is now truly on the Met’s mind
The Harlem Renaissance is one of the most significant cultural movements that emerged in the early decades of the 20th century in the US, with Black artists, writers, musicians and thinkers engaging in self-expression with pride and creativity.
House Sparrows Weather Winter in Urban Hollows
The house sparrow in New York City is so common as to be almost invisible, even in winter when migrating birds depart for the season, and it remains to find warmth below dormant window air conditioners and in the crannies of urban architecture. In winter, the house sparrows tend to move together in flocks, drinking from puddles that form on manhole covers and foraging on what food they can find.
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